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Germany is looking to capitalise on the fact that it is hosting next year's soccer World Cup to promote itself to foreign visitors and TV viewers, as well as boosting self esteem among its own citizens.

Earlier this year, ad agency Scholz & Friends was appointed to head up the promotional effort and agency creative head has been outlining to the Swiss advertising and marketing magazine Persoenlich just what this involves and some of the creative ways his firm is going about presenting the comcept of Germany as  Land der Ideen'  (or 'the country of ideas').

Germany, 'Land of Ideas'

  
Turner stresses that, in describing itself thus, Germany isn't suggesting that other countries don't have ideas but that the idea is to bring to the forefront what he believes the country is known for worldwide.

One feature of the campaign, Persoenlich notes, involves the placing of an enormous pile of books on the Bebelplatz in Berlin, once the scene of a historic book-burning incident during Nazi times.

That, says Turner, is just one of a range of initiatives, all taking the form of large sculptures. While they may have little to do with football, Turner points out that once 2006 has passed, Germany will still be there and the intention is to form a lasting image of the country's creative strengths in the minds of visitors.

Official partners of the campaign include major companies such as e-On, BASF and Deutsche Telekom, but rather than relying on their marketing experience, Turner has studied the marketing strategies adopted by other international events in recent years. For many, he says, the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney offered an excellent example. His agency asked the organisers what, if they were conducting the exercise again today, they would like to do better. Those questions led to the important insight that all efforts had to centre on one core message that should be clearly visualised.

Persoenlich counters that this sounds rather banal (which, indeed, it does), but Turner maintains that, so far, no one event has truly carried it off. What, he asks, do you associate with Japan, Korea or Athens when you think of the Olympic Games or World Cup? No single message was developed, nor was it given visual form across the country. Perhaps, Turner says, this was because no-one thought in the run-up to those events that on the day after the final, they would belong to the past.

The World Cup offers an opportunity to get a message across to a potential audience of 28 billion, Turner continues and he aims to express that message through a variety of impressive visual forms. In addition to the book tower in Berlin's Bebelplatz, his agency will be placing a giant shoe in front of the Parliament buildings and enormous bear outside the Chancellor's Office.

All this, Turner says, is designed to convey through eye-catching imagery that Germany is the 'land of ideas'. The monuments are specifically designed to serve as 'magnets' for the world's media during the World Cup and provide visual material that viewers will want to watch. Placing an enormous teddy bear outside the Chancellor's Office, he says, is one sure way to achieve that.

Click on the link below (left) to read this story for yourself, in German, on the Persoenlich website. Alternatively, click on the link below (right) to visit the official 'Land der Ideen' website.